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Monday, February 20, 2012

Lessons in Storytelling—THE END!

I
was flipping through channels at 2:00 am the other day (I’m an insomniac :) and
I came across a director talking about how he makes movies. He said something
that just struck me, “People will forgive you a lot of mistakes IF
you don’t screw up the ending!”

I
think I messed up the quote a little (if you know it please correct me), but I
got the main gist of it. I loved this idea because, for me, if the ending is
bad it will ruin the whole book, even the whole series.

This
is what ruins an ending for me:

No consequences for
choices—I
HATE this. If you’re going to make your character choose—STICK TO THE
CONSEQUENCES! Don’t let them off the hook.

Rushed or incomplete
endings—Don’t
you hate reading and feeling like the author just gave up. As a writer I know
this is probably not the case, but make sure your readers don’t feel like this.

Dragging out the story
too long past the ending climax—This is so annoying. Please don’t do it :)

An obvious ending—It’s terrible to know
for 100 pages how things will end.

I like endings that offer hope and/or ones that lets me imagine the characters going off and continuing their lives.

I don't usually care for endings that tie everything up all nice and pretty and/or ones that leave off with too much of a cliffhanger. It's a balancing act - answering some questions and not others, leaving the reader wanting more but not leaving them breathless (or annoyed!)

Ugh, I agree with you 100% w/ no consequences for choices. This is my #1 pet peeve in storytelling. The writer ought to have written down every single instance throughout the book the characters make a decision, especially when that decision comes to play right at the end! I tell you, sometimes I think they forget and they expect us to take whatever they dish out. Lemme have at 'em! :)

I prefer endings that aren't too happy. It's always disappointing if everything works out for everyone and they're going around singing some up-tempo song or something. I prefer the bittersweet endings, like "The Empire Strikes Back" vs. "Return of the Jedi" where in Empire everything didn't work out for everyone whereas in the other it was Happily Ever After.

And I'd agree with Kyra that I hate too those twist endings where it's one twist too many. Like when I watched the movie "Duplicity" and the big twist at the end could only be possible if our characters were complete morons. But the director wanted to get one more twist in there to mess with people, so he cast aside all logic and common sense to do it.

I love happy endings. I have a problem with figuring things out really fast, so obvious endings are normal for me. I LOVE to be surprised though. That's the best ending I think. Happy and surprising. :)

These are all horrible things, especially when actions don't have the consequences they were supposed to have. And I'm not the biggest fan of a complete cliffhanger ending--I need some of the plot wrapped up, whether happily or unhappily.

I like a lot of suspense. I've wondered why people like to watch movies based on true stories or books they've already read. I think it's the suspense of seeing it all unfold before their eyes for the first time. (I still don't get why Titanic was huge hit though.)

Haha - great list there. One of the reasons I hated Mockingjay so much is because I felt like she really rushed the ending (the healing) too much. Then I heard she'd already begun writing the screenplay for the Hunger Games movies, so that reinforced my thoughts. A friend of someone in my bookclub has a friend who writes fanfic. She was so distressed at the unsatisfying (incomplete) ending, that she wrote a fanfic piece and filled it out. Did a wonderful job with it, too. If I can ever stomach reading the book again, I will print out that fanfic piece and add it to the end of the book. I've referred many people to it, and everyone's said they like the book better with the expanded ending. Collins should have given us that.

Bravo for this post! Bravo! Because I completely agree with this. The best way to ruin a book effectively is to ruin the book. @Donna, sounds like you got an awesome friend! I've read the first two Hunger Games books lately (the first two I LOVE. Love love!) but the last book Mockingjay fell so flat in comparison! So so flat! The ending was so rushed, terrible climax, and even some of the characters seemed out of character a bit, but that was probably because of the rushed feeling.

I've a tendency to read the ending of a story about halfway through the book, so as long as it fits the story, I'll take whatever ending is given.On the other hand, I seem to have a habit of writing endings where the MC wins, but has had to sacrifice something to get what they wanted.

I have a friend who reads the last chapter or two BEFORE she starts a book. Almost without fail she does this.She REALLY hates bad endings and won't waste her time if it's not going to end well.True story.

I agree with you, because if I hate the ending then I know I'll ever be able to reread the book; I'll just keep dreading the ending. I hate it when characters make choices that I hate, like in love stories where the main character picks the wrong guy (in my opinion).

Angela Cothran

About Angie

I LOVE books of all kinds and in just the last few years I've discovered I also LOVE to write. I'm currently working on creating a compelling story: a little romance,a little betrayal, a well placed twist, and if a few people die-well it was bound to happen :)

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